Monthly Archives: January 2013

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll look at nice places, people, and/or things any time. I’ll probably even enjoy it. I’m pretty simple when you get right down to it. There’s a good chance I’d even enjoy it with someone else.

But it all depends.

I take umbrage to a certain phrase. This phrase is uttered world wide, I’d have to assume. I’ve heard it in so many locales it often confuses me. How can so many places be this thing? You’d think something this special would be at least a little exclusive. But, no, I’ve heard it in an untold number of places and, honestly, some of them really wouldn’t have qualified if I had a vote.

It’s used primarily by people who grew up there (many, for whatever unearthly reason if this place is so special, have chosen to move away) but it’s also used often and obnoxiously by transplants or, sometimes, overwhelmed visitors.

And it bugs me. Not because I deny their right to say it. But because of their attitude. As if this is the only location in the world that deserves this designation. It’s the smugness in their tone when they spout it. It’s the look in their eyes as they wave their arms majestically to and fro pointing out what is obviously in front of us.

“This,” a man said bestowing his wisdom upon my dome. “Is god’s country.

Please note that I totally know what I’m doing when I do things like this. I am skilled, capable, and quite notoriously a major asshole. I know full well that if I go forward and say the words that are clanging around my vocal cords straining for life, the person who will hear them will most likely have a fierce hatred of me.

But you know me! I’m a risk taker!

“Why do you call it that? Because man hasn’t shown up yet to put in all the cool stuff like malls and bars and a few dunkin’ donuts?”

Let me tell you, it might be god’s country but they sure don’t have any compunction to taking his name in vain.

. . .a nice conversation with a woman. She seems nice, maintains eye contact, laughs in the right context, brings out a couple beauties of her own (yes, I’m talking about her tits), all in all we’re having a nice time. All of a sudden she wrinkles up her nose and, because women are genteel, says,

“”What the fuck is that gawd-awful smell?”

It is true, what once didn’t stink is now stank. I take a few sniffs in the air, she asked a question after all, satisfied, I respond,

Someone wouldn’t believe I’m not the resolution type. It’s not to say there aren’t things I can’t change (my girlfriend has a list. An ever evolving list) but giving it such prominence is self-defeating. Making a list and checking it twice, we’re gonna find out who’s body ain’t tight, full despair is coming to town isn’t my thing (maybe that could be one. I could resolve to get a thing).

Nah, I have enough pressure not doing the things the voices tell me. Just think if I wrote some of those bad boys out? Then I’d feel obligated to do them. Trust me, the carnage you can imagine would only be a Lifetime Humanity In Peril Movie Of The Week. In reality I’d be my own series, “Holy Shit! How’d We Not See That Coming?’ Maybe Discovery would have it’s own week devoted to me, Zell Week: Turns out you would have been safer with sharks. Has a nice ring to it actually.

But I didn’t want to bother this annoying person with all that background. Whenever someone tells me they don’t believe me I have trouble knowing where to go from there. Sure, I can hit the obvious, tell them it’s because the truth doesn’t fit into the narrow scope of their psychosis. But that never works. I could go for a warning,

“You should let it go before I tell you some truths you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to scrub off your brain with steel wool.”

Or, sadly because I don’t listen to the voices in my head, I let them down easily,

“Well, if you don’t like my truth it’d be best for you to leave because all I’ve got left are opinions and, trust me, you are NOT going to like them.”

The resolution person is only venturing here as a redirect. You see, she doesn’t really care that I’ve resolved to give up squirrelly sex (HEY! Let’s not get disgusting here! That’s where you resolve to stop making squinty little faces during sex. You people are sick!). She wants me to ask about her resolutions because, so far, she’s been on the ball.

To the gym, away from any bar not of the salad variety, she’s read a book without a number and color in the title, been mentoring someone in something she knows a little about but is wrong at least half the time, you know, just being a so much better person than the acid spewing slug named I.

And she wants me to know it.

But I don’t give it to her. I know for a fact the first time Gladys in the office doesn’t notice the three pounds she’s lost this week she’ll spiral into a cheese danish and mojito coma.

I’m not picking on women here, men are just as resolution loopy. But I can, socially acceptably, rip another guy to shreds when he tells me by summer he’s going to turn his keg into a six-pack. I can berate him, cause him to crumble into a fetal position, stand over him while mockingly pouring beer all over him and they’ll still let me stay on the public bus.

But I wasn’t going to budge. And neither was she. She finally changed her tactic to the old,

I am fortunate. I know that. I find myself in unpleasant situations with people yet they always give me a way to burrow out. I poke out my non-fuzzy, caustic head which causes them to scurry while I enjoy doing the Caddyshack gopher dance with my dignity intact (let’s not quibble over that, okay?).

“You got me.” I say. “I couldn’t believe it, but I did. I swear it’s a compulsion. A weakness. You’re right, I have but only one.”

“What is it?” She, with moral superiority, asks.

“I’ve killed the years first hobo and turned him into a garden scarecrow.”

“Do you always have to be such an idiot?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, it’s the only resolution I’ve consistently maintained.”

. . .need more proof that I’m huge ball of ass, let me let you gnaw on this one.

I was directing a live shoot that had about five minutes to air when one of the guests rushes up to me urgently. He says it as quietly as possible,

“I think I’ve really got to take a shit.”

“Well, we sure wouldn’t want to see you Roker yourself so. . .”

The crew around me, only hearing one side of the conversation (mine), quickly deduces not only what I’m talking about but who I’m talking to. He becomes even more uncomfortable than when he first spoke to me.